I have decided to take the Project365 Challenge. Starting on January 1, 2010, I am going to take one photo per day for the entire year. I am not setting any rules as to what the photo should be or should look like. It just has to be a piece of my life, or an idea that I have, from that day. I will also add a brief decription of my thought process and why that photo is my photo for the day. If you choose to read/view my blog, you will get to know a little bit about me.

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Corporate Headshot - Day 59 of 365

Today's picture is rather boring. On Friday, I found out that I have to submit a headshot and bio for a meeting that I have coming up with the CEO of the parent company of the company that I work for (a multinational technology conglomerate). I haven't had a headshot done in years, so I figured that this would be an opportunity to see if I could do my own headshot instead of going out to get one done (or, worse yet, having the company default to using my ID badge picture, which is really bad). I haven't had a lot of practice doing people shots, so this was somewhat of a challenge for me -- it was definitely different than my "Rock & Roll" shot from the other night.

Because I'm new to doing portrait/headshot photography, I used the great info that I found over on Stefan Tell's photostream. Stefan has generously provided some really great portrait/headshot setup info in his flickr photostream and in his blog.

In the end, I decided that, as a beginner at this, I should keep it simple. I went for a one strobe (flash) setup. I had an SB-600 placed camera left and high about 45 degrees in front of me, a reflector close in to me camera right (I used a reflective windshield cover taped to a mic stand). I used another windshield cover to partially gobo the background to keep it from getting too dark (my room wasn't big enough to move far enough away from the background to get the color of gray that I wanted). The background is just a white wall with the spill from the single strobe. The strobe provided all of the light in the shot (without it on, the picture was pitch black).

It's not a masterpiece, but I'm happy with how it came out. I think that it should do fine for its purpose. I had fun doing it, but I missed the creativity element that I normally have fun with when I do my Project 365 shots.